Category Archives: Stratford Festival

Happy birthday, Mr. Shakespeare! Also, happy birthday to me! Today I turn 28, but the milestone birthday goes to the Bard himself, who turns 450! Every year on our shared birthday, I like to reflect back on the amazing ways that I’ve experienced Shakespeare over the course of the year, and my goals as a Bardolator (unabashed Shakespeare lover) for the coming year. Take a look back at my Shakespeare’s Birthday Resolutions from 2012 and 2013 – I can’t believe how quickly time flies!

Up till now

The past year’s shakespeareance (I had to – just once) most dear to me is my trip to England. There, I presented my research alongside my peers, and I got to go on a mini tour to visit some of my favorite people in London, Oxford, and Cambridge. I feel so lucky to be able to gallivant around England for a few weeks every year or two; however broke I am afterwards, I still think of it as one of the top perks of being a scholar. I love being able to work from where I want, when I want, be it in the promised land of Shakespeare himself, or working away at my desk with a sleeping cat next to me for moral support. Both are part of the lifestyle that I’ve come to savour over the past year.

Some of National Theatre Live’s best offerings!

As ever, I cannot express the extent of my appreciation for the technology and arts funding that brings the best of England’s theatre live to my local cinema. This year, I got to see Rory Kinnear’s Olivier-winning turn as Iago in Othello; Tom Hiddleston’s Coriolanus, which was just as sexy as I’d hoped; and Kenneth Branagh’s outstanding Macbeth, which I am over the moon to be seeing in New York this coming June!

Professionally, I am always striving to strike a balance between working hard and having fun. This year, the fates aligned when my Victorian ecocritic boyfriend got assigned to TA Shakespeare with me; to have a boyfriend who can quote Shakespeare is pretty much all I’ve ever wanted…and far be it from me to stop our students from calling us the Brad and Angelina of the English department 😉

Thanks for the Bardie, Shakespeare Standard!

But enough of the lovey-dovey stuff! This year, I’ve been working to keep on top of my blogging while doing my research, which isn’t always easy but is nonetheless immensely rewarding. This morning, I found out that I won two Bardie awards on behalf of The Shakespeare Standard, where I discuss my grad school experiences in the Secret Diary of a PhD Candidate. Winning the award is such an honour, and reminds me that it’s worth it to keep writing because there are people out there who will keep reading! I thank you! I continue to strive to make your blogging experience better, which is why I’ve finally done away with the dusty bardolator23.wordpress.com domain and have finally locked down TheBardolator.com. Stay tuned for some exciting updates over the course of this year, too; as I get closer to the job market, I want to make this place shine!

And finally, the dissertation: I’m proud and relieved to have made some substantial progress on my dissertation research this year. After years of grappling with The Merchant of Venice (relationship status: it’s complicated.), it finally hit me that it is the beast that I was meant to tackle in my dissertation. I’ll be presenting the first nugget of that research at a symposium at the University of Toronto this weekend: wish me luck!

What’s to come

This past year, I’ve been building up my teaching skills by taking a course on teaching and learning in higher education. Teaching at the university level doesn’t require a Bachelor of Education, but the methods I learned in the course have already proved indispensable for my marking, and I can’t wait to see how they influence my teaching. In September, I will be teaching my own course. This is an experience that has been no less than five years in the making, and I can’t be more excited about it. Word docs with creative ideas abound!

Got an idea for my Shakespeare course hashtag? Leave it in the comments below!

But as much as teaching is a time to pass on my knowledge, it’s still very much a time for me to grow. In the past, I’ve been known to ride what I would call the “textual high horse” – I’ve argued that Shakespeare must first and foremost be understood through reading the text, and then only afterwards should students watch the movies. While this is one of my ideals, I recognize that undergraduate study habits don’t always work that way. For my course, I will be screening each of the films and I really hope all students, whether they’ve had/made the time to read the text or not, come to these screenings and engage with the material in whichever ways they can. I want to make these screenings a party- popcorn potlucks! I’ll know that it works if the students develop a course hashtag. I’ll be sure that it works if the students turn that hashtag into t-shirts – fingers crossed!

On the vein of performance, my goals for this coming year are, as always, to immerse myself in more Shakespeare! I’m particularly excited for what’s to come in Shakespeare performance this year. Much to my joy, the Stratford Festival is fulfilling one of my dreams: to stage more than one production of the same Shakespeare play to show the variety of interpretations that can spin out of one major dramaturgical difference. This year, they’re staging two productions of Midsummer Night’s Dream!

Benedict is primed for performance!

There is one production, though, that I’m more excited about than any other, excited enough to book another trip across the pond for it. What’s that? Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet at the Barbican, August 2015! It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve read or seen that play: I can’t wait to see how Olivier award-winning director Lyndsey Turner will spin it! Will Benedict act like Sherlock, or Kahn, or think outside of the box? We’ll have to wait and see! So what’s the plan till then? My plan is to use that trip as my brass ring, the goal that pushes me to finish my dissertation and then take a much-needed vacation!

And with that, let’s celebrate! Happy birthday, Mr. Shakespeare! To another 450 years!

I haven’t done an “Arresting Images” post in a while, so it’s about time that I do! “Arresting Images,” just to recap, are words that Shakespeare uses that make you stop and think, “Wow! He just made something so seemingly normal or overdone sound so meaningful, so memorable! That must be why we’re still studying his work after 400 years!”

Carmen Grant as Isabella and Tom Rooney as Angelo in the 2013 Stratford Festival production of Measure for Measure

I recently saw the Stratford Festival’sproduction of Measure for Measure and it reminded me of all the arresting images that this play has to offer. Although the plot isn’t particularly well-known, you’ve probably seen the metaphors printed on a coffee mug or fridge magnet.

The play is about the nature of justice: when the Duke of Vienna feels like he hasn’t been fulfilling his duty to uphold the law, he takes a short hiatus to wander the streets in costume, putting himself in touch with the voice of the people while the scrupulous Angelo holds down the fort.

William Holman Hunt’s painting of Isabella telling Claudio to prepare for his execution

When Angelo takes the reigns, people are surprised at his severity. Isabella, a nun-in-training, begs Angelo not to execute her brother for the crime of impregnating his girlfriend, who had enthusiastically consented to the union. The stand-in Duke responds:

“The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.”

Isn’t that amazing? Angelo is showing that he is waking up the legal system of Vienna. Angelo sees the citizens as assuming that they can get away with breaking the laws (in this case, laws against premarital sex) because the Duke hadn’t enforced them. While Angelo is waking up the legal system, he offers the people of Vienna a harsh wake-up call.

Isabella begs Angelo to forgive her brother’s youthful impetuousness, and says that Claudio will remedy the crime by marrying and taking care of the expectant Juliet (no, not that Juliet). Angelo refuses to yield to this reasonable solution, and offers the most outstanding metaphor as to why it’s necessary for him to start upholding the law:

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.

Crow perched on a scarecrow

That line is worth reading twice, three times, and then putting it up on a wall somewhere. Instead of saying that “my town, my rules,” Shakespeare provides us with an unforgettable image that even those without farmland can understand: scarecrows are not scary enough. Men with guns are scary, dukes with the power to execute men are scary, but scarecrows are all show, with little power to deter the vultures that might destroy the crops and lead to greater repercussions. Angelo may not be shocked and appalled by Claudio’s engagement in consensual sex, but it’s his job to uphold the law where the Duke was too lenient, and he takes that responsibility seriously.

When discussing the notion of mercy in Shakespeare, people usually refer to Portia’s “The quality of mercy” speech in The Merchant of Venice. Yet, Measure for Measure offers outstanding, and frankly underrated meditations on the nature of mercy, and why sometimes it’s important to allow the legal system some wiggle room in order to let people coexist in peace.

Thematically, this play interrogates whether a binary even exists between justice and mercy, and metaphorically, it offers outstanding imagery of the battle between darkness and light. Lucio is Claudio’s best friend, and his name is derived from Latin words that mean “light” or “shine.” Angelo represents his foil (his character opposite), but instead of being the darkness to snuff out Lucio’s light, he’s the cold that threatens to overcome Lucio’s shining sun of humour and optimism. Lucio calls Angelo

“a man whose blood / Is very snow-broth”

Brrr! I need a cup of soup even thinking about snow-broth!

– isn’t that amazing? It gives me the chills just to think about it! I think about the slush that I walk on in the winter, and the countless bowls of soup it takes to warm me up, and that shows me that I would never want to deal with someone so stubborn, so disagreeable, as to be comprised of snow-broth.

So that brings my quick exploration of Measure for Measure’s arresting images to a close. I’m not sure why this play isn’t taught in high schools. It’s got material on teen pregnancy, good quotes for pre-law keeners, and ultimately offers essay topics that are ripe for the picking. Have you tried teaching Measure for Measure in your classroom?

I’m just coming off the most tremendous post-Shakespearegasm high after learning that Kenneth Branagh will be re-imagining his Manchester International Festival production of Macbeth for the New York stage. It makes me so happy to know that great theatre is not exclusively reserved for UK consumption, and while I have every intention to book a flight to the Big Apple as soon as I have my ticket for Macbeth, I am also relieved that I’ll be able to see an as-live broadcast of the Manchester production at my local movie theatre in October, courtesy of National Theatre Live.

Festival Theatre, Stratford

But my enthusiasm over international productions in no way suggests that, as a Canadian, I am living in some sort of cultural wasteland. Far from it! I’ve been quite vocal in my excitement over the Stratford Festival’s excellent productions, and their 2014 lineup offers a lot to look forward to!

Although my involvement in Shakespeare is mostly research-based, the fan-girl I am has been known to daydream about being the artistic director of a fabulous Shakespeare festival. Choosing a season that offers great individual plays that also work in harmony with each other reaps its own rewards, but ever since I spent an entire semester studying Hamlet during my MA, I’ve thought about how interesting it would be to present the same play, but through multiple different productions.

By showing multiple versions of a single play side-by-side, the festival would be able to show viewers that Shakespeare’s texts can take on any number of meanings. Is Hamlet really mad? Is Hamlet himself a puritanical quack, or is he totally justified in objecting his mother’s remarriage to her brother-in-law? Does Gertrude love Claudius? Was she in cahoots with him for Hamlet Sr.’s death? Was the Dane a tyrannical husband? Or perhaps one play could be set in different countries or time periods: Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado was set in the Italian countryside, sometime in the past, but not entirely early modern; the Donmar production was set in the 80s, complete with 80s soundtrack; Joss Whedon’s Much Ado shows how well the text can fit into today’s romantic drama. Rather than being force-fed one interpretation, people can see that Shakespearean dramaturgy is fluid, allows for so much breathing room, and ultimately lets people devise their own opinion of what meanings best fit these open-ended plays.

“Reason and love keep little company together nowadays”

So why do I bring this up? Because the Stratford Festival just revealed that it’ll be showing two productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2014! One production will be directed by Chris Abraham, who has been blazing a trail of late in Stratford and Toronto, and the second by Peter Sellars, not to be confused with the Pink Panthercomedian, whose surname is spelled “Sellers.” Sellars is internationally acclaimed, most recently directing Phillip Seymor Hoffman as Iago in 2009. Whereas the Abraham production sounds like a sweeter tale of love and hijinks, the Sellars production sounds more experimental. The latter’s production will feature only four cast members playing all of the roles, and will examine “the role-playing, mercurial mood swings, delusional fantasy, deep hurt, and forgiveness and release at the heart of human relationships.” While I’m excited to get some fresh ideas about the text by comparing the two, I am especially looking forward to Sellars’s production, because it will offer much food for thought to put towards my dissertation, which focuses on the darker side of affect in Shakespeare’s comedies.

Tickets for the 2014 season go on sale to Festival Members on November 11, and to the general public on January 4, 2014. Which production(s) will you be seeing?

Cymbeline is, in a word, a doozy. It is rarely taught in schools because the plot is so darn complicated; the chief reason for this is that not one, not two, but at least five characters, at some point or another, intentionally or inadvertently, go about this play in disguise. While this makes for a tough read, director Antoni Cimolino proves that it can be significantly more entertaining to watch.

Posthumous gives Innogen a token of his love

Going to the theatre, we expect to be entertained but in the best cases, we are also moved. After largely overlooking them in my annual pre-show lecture to my ever-patient mother, I was most touched by the performances by EB Smith and Ian Lake, who played the roles of Guiderius and Arviragus. These characters know themselves as Polydore and Cadwal, the supposed sons of Morgan, actually Belarius, a courtier that had been banished for treason and took the boys with him into exile, twenty years earlier.[1] One appealing feature was, no doubt, their brawniness, but more so, I was touched by their bright-eyed innocence, their playfulness with each other, their genuine affection for the old man who they think is their father, and the way their hearts open wide to accommodate the beautiful boy Fidele, actually Innogen[2] incognito, who they take in as a little brother for no more reason than “Love’s reason’s without reason.”

The main love-match in the play is Innogen and her betrothed, Posthumous Leonatus. King Cymbeline banishes him when he finds out that they are all-but married. As Cymbeline’s only remaining biological child, Innogen must marry for the kingdom’s advantage rather than her heart’s. Exiled on the continent, Posthumous’s false friend Iachimo[3] tricks him into believing that Innogen is unfaithful, and Posthumous sends his servant, Pisanio, to kill her. Charmed by her, he reveals his master’s plans and tells her to disguise herself as a boy and hide. Clearly, Pisanio is far nobler than his master, who I usually resign alongside Othello and Claudio as weak and gullible, unworthy of my tears. Onstage, though, Posthumous redeems himself, not through his own actions, but through the love and forgiveness of Innogen, who literally throws herself at him in the concluding moments of the play. At that final moment, she is no longer the gangly Fidele, but the tragic princess for whom things are finally going right.

To oh-so-sauve Geraint Wyn Davies as King Cymbeline

The beauty of the Shakespearean Romance is that the Bard never lets too many bodies pile up onstage before he sets everything right. Belarius comes forward to tell Cymbeline that his sons are alive, consequently shoving castle-raised Innogen back to third in line for inheritance. This resolution is unsettling, but characteristic of the Romances: things have changed for the better, but there’s no rule dictating that the result is fully just (or just on today’s terms). This moment should leave readers with a sour taste in their mouths, but Cimolino chose to overlook this aspect. This omission leaves the play’s conclusion with less of that unsettling dimension that we should be exposed to when watching the Problem Plays and Romances, but I applaud the director’s focus on the other crucial aspects of the genre: redemption and reconciliation. The “Evil Stepmother” of a Queen is dead, and the King finds his only daughter alive and able to reconcile with her true love, clearly caring more for their reunion than the throne she no longer has claim to. The play ends with a glorious group hug, a moment which might sound cheesy in print, but one that brought tears to my eyes as I was the first to jump up and give the cast its much-deserved standing ovation.